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Olympic Poem Relay: Write Your Two Line Lap

We’re creating a giant relay poem to help prepare for the Olympic experience, and we’re asking you to contribute two lines! Plus our favourite three submissions will win Young Poet Network notebooks.

We’re asking everyone to write two lines which we will join together to form one marathon poem. Your lines can be on any aspect of the games, here are some ideas to get your started:

Your favourite Olympic sport
Watching sport at home or in a stadium
An athlete training
The torch relay passing through your area
The opening ceremony
Olympic buildings and venues
Newspaper headlines and advertising slogans

If you’re not a sports fan, and are sick of hearing about the Olympics you could even write a couplet about that too!

To help us join all the lines together we’re asking you to use the same rhythm of this famous couplet from boxer and sporting hero Muhammad Ali:
“Float like a butterfly, Sting like a bee.
George can’t hit what his eyes can’t see”

Try saying it to yourself a few times to get the rhythm in your head before composing your own sporting couplets. You can send in as many couplets as you wish but we will only select one couplet per person to include in the final poem.

To submit your lines just pop them in an email to ypn@poetrysociety.org.uk along with your name and age if you are 25 or under (if your are over 25 you can just say “over 25”)!

This particular challenge is open to poets of all ages.

We are running this challenge in sections. The first section closed on the 9th July and we’re piecing those lines into a poem at the moment. We will be running a second sections during the games so you can still send us your couplets for the final poem.

The red light ignites the amber flame,
Traffic lights on standby for the green we wait…
for the signal to go,
the gun powder flows through the barrel to explode and let the Olympians show who should own the 24 carrot throne.